Rent the Runway Pledges $1M to Support Black Designers

Christopher Luu
·3 min read

While #blackouttuesday continues to turn timelines dark — for better or for worse — Rent the Runway used the occasion to make a huge announcement: the company will donate $1 million to support Black designers. On top of that, Rent the Runway made a $100,000 donation on Tuesday to organizations "combating racial injustice," such as the NAACP and Black Vision Collective.

"We want our actions as a business to be substantive and systematic, so we are doing the slow work to build a clear and sustained long-term strategy to fight systemic racism and make Rent the Runway, and the wider fashion industry, more diverse and anti-racist," Rent the Runway captioned an Instagram post.

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The caption continued, explaining that Rent the Runway would be doing more than just introducing and supporting Black designers onto its platform. The company promised to offer resources and mentorship as well as cash.

"We will also be allocating an additional $1,000,000 to support Black designers through our wholesale, platform, and co-manufacturing initiatives, which includes providing design resources, data, mentorship, and financial support to create collections for RTR," the company continued.

The company also pledged to go beyond the clothes. According to People, "Black models, brand ambassadors, stylists, photographers, videographers and crew members" would have more prominent roles at the brand.

"We are committing today that at least 15% of the fashion talent that we feature and support moving forward are from the Black community," Rent the Runway finished. "We know that the Black community is tired of the long-standing racism and violence. We also acknowledge the cyclical nature of society’s attention to moments of such injustice, so we vow to take systematic actions as a business that will last beyond this current moment in time. This is just the start, and we look forward to sharing further details on other plans soon. Our work has just begun.⁣"

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We want our actions as a business to be substantive and systematic, so we are doing the slow work to build a clear and sustained long-term strategy to fight systemic racism and make Rent the Runway, and the wider fashion industry, more diverse and anti-racist. ⁣ ⁣ Today, we are donating $100,000 to immediately support organizations combating racial injustice, including @NAACP and @blackvisionscollective. We will also be allocating an additional $1,000,000 to support Black designers through our wholesale, platform and co-manufacturing initiatives, which includes providing design resources, data, mentorship and financial support to create collections for RTR. It is critically important to us that a significant portion of our $1M goes towards launching fashion brands from Black designers who have not had the investment capital to launch on their own. ⁣ ⁣ For too long, the fashion industry has co-opted the style, inspiration and ideas of Black culture without ensuring that Black people are economically compensated for this. Therefore, we will also support @aurorajames’ #15PercentPledge. We are committing today that at least 15% of the fashion talent that we feature and support moving forward are from the Black community, inclusive of the models in our marketing, the ambassadors we use, and the styling talent, photographers, videographers and crews behind the camera. ⁣ ⁣ We know that the Black community is tired of the long-standing racism and violence. We also acknowledge the cyclical nature of society’s attention to moments of such injustice, so we vow to take systematic actions as a business that will last beyond this current moment in time. This is just the start, and we look forward to sharing further details on other plans soon. Our work has just begun.⁣

A post shared by Rent the Runway (@renttherunway) on Jun 1, 2020 at 7:15pm PDT